How To Make A Paper Mache Snake – My last project for my Voodoo Bayou Halloween Party: I made this giant snake! He is made of foam tubes, wire hangers, duct tape, papier-mâché, paint and a few other sprays.

I started with a package of black pipe insulation from Home Depot; Four one meter foam tubes for only $3! This material is wonderful to work with; Very light, strong, flexible, easy to cut etc. It’s so great for creating organic shapes that I ended up using a bunch of it in two projects before I tackled the snake: my six-foot bat ornament and a pair of horns for a devil mask I’m working on (pictures coming soon). When it came time to start on the snake, I only had two and a half meters of pipe, so the snake was seven and a half feet. (I later added a tail of bubble wrap totaling nine feet; more below.)

How To Make A Paper Mache Snake

I wanted this snake to wrap around one of our life size plastic skeletons and wrap around the top of our kitchen cabinets. Even though I’m a perfectionist with most of my projects, I like to keep this really simple and quick. Since the snake and skeleton will be above the boxes, the guests will not see the details too closely, and a large part of the whole prop will be hidden; No one will see the back of the backrest and the upper surface as it is up to the ceiling. So I decided to skip many details and just focus on the more visible parts. I saved a lot of time this way.

Medusa • Ultimate Paper Mache

Well, before I started the snake, I had to modify the skeleton first. I have these four huge plastic skeletons, and while they are doable, they can only be in very stiff, unnatural positions. So every year I take them apart and put them back together so I can give them more lifelike poses. In this case I took the arms off (easy to do with a screwdriver) and rewired them with some leftover scrap wire; I wanted to position the hands as if the skeleton was being pressed by a snake. I open the jaw and fasten it to the collarbone to turn the head towards the viewer, and fasten the ankles together.

Okay, now for the snake! I didn’t take many pictures of the beginning steps because they were so easy! You don’t need to see every step to do this.

I used wire cutters to separate the four wire hangers. Be careful when you do this! Protect your eyes and make sure you don’t cut/stab/pinch yourself. If you’re a kid, do this part grown up!

I unraveled the wire hangers with pliers and straightened them as much as possible. Then I bent the ends of each one to make little hooks; Basically I bent a one inch wire. Then I connected all the hooks together, and wrapped the attached parts in tons of packing tape and attached all the wires to a long strip.

File:cobra Snake Cornish Sculpture In Papier Mâché.jpg

I carefully ran the entire length of wire through the foam tube. Do this slowly so the holes in the tubes don’t tear! Once I got the wire at the other end of the pipe, I bent a few inches of wire back to make a large hook to anchor the end of the pipe. I taped this with a lot of duct tape.

Now it’s time to start coiling the snake! I took the pipe and began to bend it with my hands. It’s easy and only takes a few minutes. I basically ran the entire length of tube through my hands, bending it slightly in the same direction. When I was done, it was a huge curveball. Then I restarted and did the same thing again. This time it started to look more circular and swirly. The third time it tightened into a beautiful spiral snake shape. You want the spiral to be as tight as you can get it so that it grips the skeleton very tightly.

Once the spiral was complete, I let it dry on my skeleton and placed one end where I wanted the snake’s head to be.

I used that scrap wire to attach the spiral tube to the skeleton in a few places. I actually ran out of wire and attached the last few pieces with string. It doesn’t look good, but then again, no one is going to look into the details of this thing! will be good

Frank Gehry, Snake Lamp < Modernist 20th Century, 18 May 2003 < Auctions

The snake body wasn’t as long as I would have liked, and a little wire was sticking out of the hanging end, so I decided to extend the body with some bubble wrap and make a tail. If I didn’t use part of my foam pipe in other projects, this wouldn’t be a problem! However, even with enough piping to get the length I wanted, I still had to find a way to taper the tail and bring it to a point, so I ended up making something like this bubble wrap tail. Anyway.

I did a partial paper mache over the snake’s body to cover the whole body shape (minus the head), the shiny taped areas and to give a nice surface to paint on. (Check out my article on my papier-mâché method and materials here.) I’m very lazy and sloppy with this part! I only masked the parts of the snake that actually faced the viewer. I thought I would paint the papier mache black and mix the black paint over the black foam and it turned out great!

I made the head while the papier mache dried. Again, I was in a big hurry and made it as simple as possible! I cut a head shape out of foam board and then cut two more of the same shape using poster board. I taped some small foam tubes to each side of the foam board header, then taped the poster board headers top and bottom and bent them over the template. I wrapped the entire pattern in tons of masking tape to soften the pattern a bit.

Once the head shape was complete, I took a toilet paper roll and cut one end slightly to fit the snake’s body and the other to fit the snake’s head. Added some packing tape to hold the whole thing together. And boom, done! Then I made paper mache on the head and neck.

Papier Mache’ Snakes

I painted all the papier-mache with black acrylic paint and a medium sized brush. I did this in stages, so my progress is all over these pictures. I will papier mache one area and while the papier mache dries I will do some paint on another. Better than I expected. In the low light of the party, no one will notice that the textures are slightly different.

Then there are the eyes and tongue. These are easy. For the eyes I took two small copper fasteners and cut off the long pieces with wire cutters, then I painted them red. When they were dry, I glued them with Elmer’s wood glue; I first scored the area slightly with an X-Acto knife so the glue would hold better. I cut a tongue shape out of poster board and painted it red. When it was dry, I drilled a hole in the front of the snake’s head with an X-Acto knife, put some wood glue on the tongue, and inserted it into the slot. Easy!

That’s it! If I have more time, I’ll paint a snake-sized texture on the snake with an old fishnet stocking and some spray paint (wrapping the skeleton in a garbage bag first to protect him). I don’t have time this year before Halloween! But this project is so easy that I would like to make more snakes like this one day and give myself enough time to paint some scales.

Another fun thing you can do with this type of project is to make a snake that can be worn as part of your Halloween costume; Wrap the snake around your body and bite your neck! If we ever do one in the jungle, I’d like to do it one of these days

Paper Fantasy Wolf Sculpture

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